# I'm tired of people getting my name wrong **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 23, 2010, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-people-getting-my-name-wrong/554778 "2010-09-23T16:03:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2010, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-people-getting-my-name-wrong/554778/81 "2010-09-24T23:12:03Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > You probably get the whole "Katherine/Catherine/Catharine"problem too. A friend of mine is named Katharine (note second “a”) and she gets this all the time. Yes I have to deal with Kath/Cath/e/a/rin/rine/ryn … as well as Kathy/Kate/Katie ---
**Author:** ![J\_Cubed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c6cbf5/32.png) [@J\_Cubed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/J_Cubed)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2010, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-people-getting-my-name-wrong/554778/82 "2010-09-25T01:04:08Z")
> [@Invisible\_Chimp](#): > > My real name is Jacob Brown. I don’t know what any of y’all are talking about. 😛 Jakob Browne? ---
**Author:** ![pbbth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@pbbth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pbbth)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2010, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-people-getting-my-name-wrong/554778/83 "2010-09-25T01:58:09Z")
My name is Rachael. I get called Crystal fairly often and the other day I got an email response where someone called me Richard. Seriously…Richard? People are so dumb sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2010, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-people-getting-my-name-wrong/554778/84 "2010-09-25T02:04:42Z")
My first name is Suzanne. About 90 percent of the time, when I give my name to a stranger, they come back with “Susan.” No. It’s different. Not that different–but different. Working in a department store, when I had my name on a badge, for some reason most people got it right. So it’s not that it’s a difficult name. But I’ve had my problems with names, so I can’t really fault anybody. I once had a job where I spent a lot of time answering the telephone and conveying messages. One of the people who called, a lot, was (and here my memory sort of blips out) either Jack Beam or Jim Daniels. I always wrote it down wrong as either Jack Daniels or–well, you can guess. But this was after several years of being miscalled as Susan, or occasionally even Sharon, so it certainly wasn’t a case of instant karma. ---
**Author:** ![slalexan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e47c2d/32.png) [@slalexan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slalexan)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2010, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-people-getting-my-name-wrong/554778/85 "2010-09-25T02:47:31Z")
> [@rinni](#): > > My name is Lynn. People insist on spelling it Lynne even when it’s right in front of them. I used to work as a live chat help agent, and my name would show up on the screen before every single message I sent, and people would _still_ write Lynne. It also always gets misheard on the phone as Liz all the time. > > > [@J\_Cubed](#): > > > > Feel free to use my line: **There’s no “I” in “team”… or “Jesse”.** > > Haha, I like this. My SO’s name is Jesse and he too gets Jessied from time to time. I shall have to pass this along! 🙂 That’s funny! My middle name is Lynne and I have the hardest time the other way around. (I go by both my first and middle names because my first is absurdly common.) Along the same lines, my last name is a common male first name and is often misheard as a female first name. It’s only happened on a couple of occasions but one notable time was when I went to the bank to open a new account and walked out with papers in hand before I realized that the customer service agent switched my names and didn’t even use the female form of my last name. Seriously? I don’t look like a boy. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2010, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-people-getting-my-name-wrong/554778/86 "2010-09-25T04:41:22Z")
> [@Rasa](#): > > My last name has two L’s and two T’s. I would say 90% of the time, I lose my last T. I don’t even get stabby anymore. Ooh. I forgot about that. My first name has 3 doubled letters, and one will often either be omitted (consonants) or replaced with another (vowel) ---
**Author:** ![sunstone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunstone/32/3372_2.png) [@sunstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sunstone)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2010, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-people-getting-my-name-wrong/554778/87 "2010-09-25T05:04:07Z")
All three of my names can be first or last names. In fact my first name is more common as a last name and my last name is more common as a first name. Thanks, Mom and Dad! I am resigned to explaining which name is which. This was not always the case; I can remember filling out (correctly) a library card application three times because the librarian thought that I had done so incorrectly. My son’s names are clearly first names as a result. ---
**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2010, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-people-getting-my-name-wrong/554778/88 "2010-09-25T05:39:03Z")
My annoyance is around the spelling of my first name. It’s Russell. Not Russel. I have never seen the first name Russell spelled with one L, but about 90% of people that I give my name to spell it wrong. From baby name sites it seems that Russel has been used and there about 14000 of them. But there are 350000 of us Russell’s. ---
**Author:** ![Leiko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Leiko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leiko)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2010, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-people-getting-my-name-wrong/554778/89 "2010-09-25T05:56:40Z")
No one can pronounce my last name “right” without being corrected, but right is in quotation marks because technically, my family pronounces it wrong. Ah, the joys of German last names corrupted by Texan ancestry. One of my high school teachers consistently pronounced it in the original German style, which I eventually accepted as “close enough.” My first name is Anna. It is NOT pronounced On-na, but most random people I encounter seem to think it is. ---
**Author:** ![EvilTOJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee59a6/32.png) [@EvilTOJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EvilTOJ)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2010, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-people-getting-my-name-wrong/554778/90 "2010-09-25T06:24:25Z")
> [@saje](#): > > My first name is Sarah, and I’m another who’s always amazed that I’ll get a return letter or email addressed to “Sara”, when the correct spelling is Right. There. One or two people I know STILL misspell it, despite many multiple times of seeing it written correctly. I have a friend named Sara who I will call Sarah intentionally just to get her goat. > [@J\_Cubed](#): > > Feel free to use my line: **There’s no “I” in “team”… or “Jesse”.** Oh I will… I will… ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2010, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-people-getting-my-name-wrong/554778/91 "2010-09-25T06:50:29Z")
There was a kid in my class at High School who pronounced his last name “Harra-dyne” even though it was the standard spelling of “Harradine”. The odd thing was his older brother pronounced it the standard way: “Harra-deen”. I don’t know what their parents used. Wherever he is now, I assume his branch of the family will forever after have his unusual pronunciation. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-people-getting-my-name-wrong/554778.md?page=4)